As a reflection of the real-life Olympic Games, the Gielinor Games was considered for return in 2016, as part of the Summer Beach Party[1], but this was decided against as the Gielinor Games content was considered outdated and not well-linked to the Beach Party.

The Gielinor Games consists of six races from all across the globe to compete in one big event. The races participating are:

There were 4 events available to participate in. Head-to-Head, Cheese-wheel rolling, and the Resource race may only be accessed by entering the portal in Varrock Square. The Marathon occurs in different worlds at various times. Note that followers may not be taken into any of the events. The total amount of skill experience earned per event each day varies, dependant on skill level, among other factors. As well as the specific skill experience, contribution points are also earned. Once players have reached the maximum contribution points (2500) no more shall be gained playing events until one spends some.

Head-to-Head is a race with a difference, with each move determined by selecting ability cards. The aim of the game is to complete the race in the shortest amount of cards possible. Agility experience is received upon completion of the race.

There are 8 rails with a wheel of cheese for each rail. The goal in this sport is to reach to the end of the hill, avoiding the obstacles along the way. For this event, one will receive Defence experience.

There is currently a glitch where if you fall down you may roll again, bringing up the message You manged to stay upright for __ rounds, You receive ___ contribution points and __ defence experience twice, giving you twice the experience and contribution points.

The Resource Race is a game set on four islands, where the goal is to collect as many resources as possible in five minutes and load them into the starting islands deposit. This sport rewards Woodcutting, Mining, and/or Farming experience (experience received depends on which resources were collected).

The starting island for the Resource race.

There are three islands in conjunction with the starting island. The islands are skill specific, with the skills being Woodcutting, Mining and Farming, to collect logs, ore, and herbs, respectively. The resources are colour coded for skill level needed to gather them.

The Marathon is set all around Gielinor. The aim is to run through all of the checkpoints and complete the course as quickly as possible. Completing the Marathon rewards the player with Constitution experience. The Marathon does not run all the time on all worlds, but it is announced through the in-game chat box on all servers. There are currently 3 known Marathon courses.

Marathon

Checkpoints

Start point

Finish point

Edgeville Marathon (m)

15

Near the Edgeville Lodestone. Warning: The whole marathon is in Wilderness.

Commentating the Gielinor Games' events are: Thok, Tentacle, a troll, a zombie, Mr Mordaut and The Raptor, who throughout their commentary are constantly ridiculing each other with corny, or more relevantly "cheesy" (both literally and figuratively) jokes.

Oomad has a shop interface that sells equipment in three tiers: bronze, silver and gold. The currency of the rewards shop are contribution points, which may be spent on emotes, a title, and cosmetic items. A maximum of 2500 contribution points may be kept at a time. Rings from each of the tiers boost the amount of contribution points that you are rewarded with, increasing with each tier. Bronze and silver tier are available to all players, while the gold tier is only available to members.

Before releasing a statement on RuneScape website about the event, Mod Mark released a statement at Runefest 2011 that Jagex would be hosting their own version of the Olympics in London.

“

The olympics are in London next year and we're a British company and we're very proud of it and we'd really like to do some stuff to do with the olympics next year. I'd like to come up with a whole load of different events and different games where you win those gold medals, silver medals, bronze medals. The whole different versions of things in the olympic games, but just a bit more runescapey. So I was thinking about the cycling. Cycling is a bit strange, and they have these teams sports where they're all cycling at the same time and they're trying to catch up with each other and it's kind of a weird relay race. So, imagine if you're on the back of a battle tortoise when you're doing that. How cool would that be? You've got a bunch of people all on battle tortoises running around the track, handing a baton over to each other, you know watching their speed, or trying to work out how much energy they've consumed from running around the track. That's the kind of thing I'd really like to do. Of course javelin throwing would be a lot of fun, but I prefer the idea of kind of aiming at a goblin who's like running around on the track. So, you know distance is important you know, but penetration of goblin, you know? How far can you stick that javelin through your goblin? Is he embedded to the floor, can he move or not, that kind of thing. That's really what I'd like to do."

In the head-to-head race, there is an ability card called "arrow to the knee". This is a reference to the "arrow to the knee" meme from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

In either of the events which take place on the floating islands in the sky like clan citadels, you are able to see the top of the Dominion Tower in the southwest direction.

The monkeys represent no god in the games, though the monkeys of Ape Atoll are devout followers of Marimbo.

Several instances of confusion occurred during Marathon announcements, including a cancellation for the World 1 Varrock Marathon and a sudden world switch from a World 3 (F2P) to World 2 (P2P) Varrock Marathon, leading to rioting among frustrated players.

In the Resource Race, the Zombie makes the comment "Gotta collect them all". This could be a reference to the lyrics of the first introduction song in the English version of the Pokémon anime.

In the Resource Race, Mr. Mordaut tells Tentacle, "I have an Avarrocka guinea, would you believe..." which is a reference to Maxwell Smart in the television series, "Get Smart".

The games originally included more events, such as battle tortoise riding and spear throwing at goblins, but these were scrapped.

If competing in the Edgeville marathon be wary of player killers as the whole race is in the Wilderness so try to bring items you're are willing to use or run the risk of losing all your items as there are no gravestones in the Wilderness.

Experience gained from different events differ greatly. For example, the Cheeseroller event only gives about 1000 XP per day while Head to Head can give over 10,000 XP per day, provided the player has a high agility level.